Week 3
Week 3 has been the most fruitful week so far!!!
The actors have been working hard! Learning their lines and working hard on their stagecraft. The creative team have visited us more than ever with sound samples and drafts of soundboards that will complement each piece. It’s just amazing seeing the directors having many conversations with Josh and Ellen, our Sound and Lighting Designers as well as scheduling our next movement and fight director visits for production week.
Iphigenia
This week was all about detail! We have been working on scene, character arcs and working really hard on scene transitions. We managed to get 3 runs in this week, which was such an achievement for the cast, they surprised themselves and even managed to do a run after a 30min session with our writer, Suhayla El-Bushra, on text edits and cuts!
It’s amazing what our cast have managed to pull out the bag; they try things out, play, have fun and take their work seriously.
I spent a lot of time with individual actors on their script running lines and talking to them about the play and how they feel the process has been for them (two plays in 3 weeks). I really enjoy listening to them and reassuring them, letting them know that they are not only fine, but amazing!
Clytemnestra
This week we had a lot of split calls so that we could work on the details and staging language scene by scene by scene. I spent time with half of the cast running lines for several hours as the piece is text heavy and cues are really important in relation to the rhythm of the play.
A highlight of the week was piecing all the scenes together! Seeing the piece as a whole, which we saw twice, with two solid runs in week 3!
There were so many discoveries with this piece as it is abstract and delicate. The story is in the words and the worlds of the characters, so it’s been very interesting playing with staging and finding moments when the worlds collide and exploring how we stage these interactions.
There is excitement and a healthy anxiety amongst the cast and crew of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra as they approach production week. I feel for the creative team who next week will have long hours and have to split their days in relation to 4 different plays. Good luck, guys! See you in tech!
Catch The Iphigenia Quartet at the Gate Theatre, 23rd April – 21st May.
